History of Albany, (Albany County) New York United States of America

ALBANY, aul?ba-ne, a county in the E. part of New York, has an area of about 483 square miles. It is bounded on the E. by the Hudson, and partly on the N. by the Mohawk, and is principally drained by Normanskill and Catskill creeks, which afford valuable waterpower. The surface in the W. and N. is rough and mountainous, but along the Hudson and other streams nearly level. The soil along the river is fertile, but in the interior sandy and in some places quite sterile. Indian corn, buckwheat, rye, oats, potatoes, and butter are the staples. In 1850 there were raised 244,411 bushels of corn; 648,389 of oats; 406,040 of potatoes; 970,142 pounds of butter, and 71,804 tons of hay. There were 7 breweries, 13 cabinet-ware manufactories, 2 edge-tool manufactories, 3 cotton factories, 8 woollen factories, 8 iron foundries, 20 flour and grist mills, 23 saw mills, 3 planing mills, 3 paper mills, 5 stove and furnace manufactories, 15 tanneries, 10 tobacco factories, and 1 bell foundry. It contained in that year 107 churches, and 14 newspaper establishments. There were 17,054 pupils attending public schools, and 1502 attending academies and other schools. Iron ore, gypsum, marl, and water limestone are found, although not in great abundance. The Hudson river, is navigable to Troy and by means of lockage to Lansingburg. The Erie and Champlain canals terminate in the north-eastern part of the county, which is also intersected by the railroad connecting Albany with Utica. Organized in 1683, and named in honor of the Duke of York and Albany, afterwards James II. Capital, Albany. Population, 93,279.

Biographies:

Joseph Henry, scientist, was born in Albany, N.Y., Dec. 17, 1799; son of William and Annie (Alexander) Henry. He was of Scottish ancestry, his grandparents on both sides having come in the same vessel to America, June 17,1775, and purchased large tracts of land in the northern part of the state of New York, in Rhode Island and in Virginia, settling finally near Galway, Saratoga c o u n t y, N.Y. Here Joseph lived in apparently unrestrained liberty from the age of seven to about fifteen, under the care of an indulgent grandmother, attending irregularly a school in the village, but passing his time chiefly in devouring every book of romance, drama, poetry and fiction he could find, feeding thus a vivid imagination, invaluable to him as an investigator in after years. During this period his father died in Albany when the boy was eight or nine years old. Joseph was awakened suddenly from his world of dreams by a book of lectures on natural science, placed opportunely in his way during a brief illness, and immediately began with ardor the pursuit of knowledge which ended only with his death. He was at this time in Albany and his mother was in straitened circumstances. He studied in the evenings with the instructors of the Albany academy, and later, by teaching, he acquired the means to pursue a regular course at the academy. He then obtained an appointment as tutor in the family of Stephen Van Rensselaer, the patroon, an old friend of the family, who had watched his course with interest, and gave to his pupils three hours of his time each day. In the meantime he was assistant to Dr. T Romeyn Beck in his chemical experiments, and under his direction pursued a course in anatomy and physiology. In 1825 he was appointed chief surveyor of a proposed state road from Albany to Buffalo. He was professor of mathematics at the Albany academy, 1826-32; professor of natural philosophy at the College of New Jersey, Princeton, 1832-48, and professor emeritus, 1848-78; and first secretary and director of the Smithsonian Institution, 1867-78. In the field of electrical science Henry's researches were profound and extensive and the results attained by him were of the greatest importance and value. He repeated many of the experiments of Arago, Amp?re, Schweigger, Sturgeon and others, elucidated many principles not discovered by earlier investigators and added much to the knowledge of electro-magnetism. His experiments in electro-magnetic induction were especially far-reaching and brilliant and led to the discovery of principles which became the foundations of many branches of the electrical industries. His accomplishments in this direction have been recognized by the scientific world by giving the name "henry" to the unit of self-induction. He also made important investigations in the subject of atmospheric electricity and formulated plans for the protection of buildings from damage by lightning. Between 1828 and 1840, he made elaborate experiments to determine the best method of constructing electro-magnets and of adopting battery currents of varying strengths to them. These experiments were carried on simultaneously with and reached the same result as those made by Ohm. The principle, now universally known as "Ohm's law," that the current in any circuit is equal to its intensity divided by the resistance of the conducter, was independently discovered and applied by Henry. When he began his researches in 1827 the electro-magnet was an inefficient instrument, consisting of a bar of iron wound loosely with a few coils of insulated wire. At a great expense of battery power it could lift a few pounds; it was useless in the arts and inadequate for telegraphic purposes. Henry converted it into two distinct instruments. The one, with along fine continuous wire, which is the sensitive instrument, that in the long circuit of the telegraph responds to distant influence, Henry called an intensity magnet, because to act thus at a distance it must be connected with an intensity battery. The other, wound with many separate coils of short thick wire, was incapable of action at a distance, but could be endowed with great strength. In 1831 he constructed a magnet capable of sustaining a weight of 3600 pounds when excited by the current from a single cell battery occupying less than one cubic foot of space. This he called a quantity magnet because it required a quantity battery, and it is this magnet, with its especial battery, which forms the short local circuit of the telegraph. The necessary connection of the magnets with their respective batteries forms the independent discovery of Henry of the law of proportion between the projectile force of the battery and the resistance in the wire of the magnet and length of circuit. Henry published an account of his magnets and pointed out the practical application of his principles to the telegraph in 1831 in the American Journal of Science. The same year he transmitted signals through a wire over a mile long, causing a bell to ring at the further end of the wire. This length of wire was sufficient to illustrate to his pupils his principles which in 1898 allowed a message to be sent around the world. At Princeton, Henry stretched his telegraphic wires across the college grounds, communicating with Mrs. Henry in his residence. He made there, in 1833, his largest magnet, called "Big Ben" by the students, and showed how an intensity magnet, when excited by distant influence, might be made to open or close the circuit of this powerful quantity magnet, bringing it thus into action at a distance. This device of opening one circuit by means of another is used in the telegraph in the relay, to call into action, to continue the line to another intensity circuit, and to bring into play the local quantity circuit. It was used by Henry from 1833 at Princeton, having been perhaps invented by him earlier. He showed by it how powerful effects might be produced at a distance, causing his magnet in the laboratory to lift and drop thousands of pounds by electrical communication from his residence on the opposite side of the college grounds, the same principle as was sub-sequeutly used in working machinery from a distance. In his telegraphic experiments Henry used the earth for the return current at least as early as 1835, being the first to complete the circuit in this way. In 1837 Wheatstone and Cook were struggling vainly with the telegraph, having discarded the electro-magnet, an essential element of their project, finding it incapable of action at a distance. Henry, then in London, came to their assistance with his two magnets and explained to Wheatstone the principles of his combinations, in this way rendering practicable the telegraph in England. On his return to America he aided Morse through personal interviews, by the exhibition of his own telegraphic apparatus in Princeton, and by advice and sympathy by letter, until the telegraph was introduced. The Morse instrument was a local type recorder; it could not act at a distance until Dr. Leonard T. Gale applied Henry's principles and made the invention practicable. Not essential to the telegraph, it was superseded by the phonetic system of hitting a metal sounder by means of a moving bar, the simple device of Henry in his Albany telegraph of 1831, in which a bar of iron, vibrating between the poles of an electro-magnet, struck a bell. All the essential elements of the electro-magnetic telegraph, viz., the phonetic device of hitting a metal sounder, the two magnets, the one in the long, the other in the short circuit, their connection with their respective batteries, the opening of one circuit by means of another, could have been patented by Henry as early as 1833 had he been so inclined, but he refused to tie up for his own use discoveries which he hoped might benefit the world. In 1831 he invented his electro-magnetic engine for maintaining continuous motion by means of an automatic pole-changer, which proved an important step in the development of the art of converting the electric current into mechanical power. Henry entered the field of the induction of currents as early as 1827, obtaining sparks from a common magnet before he made his electro-magnets, thus making the discovery of magneto-electricity before Faraday, who announced it in 1832. In 1829 or 1830 he discovered the "extra current," discovered by Faraday in 1884. In 1831 he obtained induced currents and sparks with his electro-magnets, as he had with the common magnets, and winding a reel with a mile of who to be revolved between the arms of a huge magnet, anticipated the dynamo. In 1832 he made other valuable experiments in this line and published his first paper upon the subject in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical society. In 1834 he pursued in Princeton the subject of the "extra current" with copper ribbons [p.209] in coils, producing sparks from the elbow which could be heard in the next room. He found that a secondary current could produce a third, this a fourth, and so on. He made a "quantity" induced current produce an "intensity," and vice versa. He discovered the oscillatory character of the electrical discharge; and anticipating the wireless telegraphy of 1900, induced currents at a distance:?in a plate in the cellar of the Philosophical Hall while the primary current was in the upper story, and between two wires stretched across the college grounds, a quarter of a mile apart, with a college building intervening. He turned the tin roof of his house into an induction plate, and by means of an electrical current induced in this by a thunderstorm twenty-five miles away, telegraphed from his residence to his laboratory. He began with this subject in 1834 and 1835, and the same year discovered electrical screening. He made numerous experiments on the various parts of a conducting wire; on atmospheric electricity, by flying kites on the college grounds; on the tenacity of water in soap bubbles; on light, heat, phosphoretic emanations; and thousands of other experiments, many of which he never published. His lectures to his students at Princeton included geology, mineralogy and architecture. In 1827-32 he aided Dr. Beck in developing his state system of meteorological observations. In 1836-37 he visited Europe, where he made the acquaintance of leading scientists, and in 1839 proposed to the U.S. government to carry on simultaneous magnetic and meteorological observations at appointed stations. When congress organized the Smithsonian Institution in August, 1846, under of the will of James Smithson, by which $515,169 was set apart for the purpose, Joseph Henry was appointed first secretary and director, and he equipped and developed the establishment. In order to continue his work in Washington, he declined the chair of natural philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and the presidency of the College of New Jersey in 1853, and again in 1867, although the salary of either place would have been double that received from the government. He made many experiments in acoustics for government buildings and also on the tenacity of building stones, and in many other matters for which his aid was required. All these services to the government were given without charge. He originated the system of investigations which resulted in the government weather reporting system; he helped to organize the U.S. lighthouse board in 1858, and was made chairman of the board in 1871. He also advised the formation of the national lighthouse system, and investigations in its behalf were amoog the last that occupied his attention. During his connection with the lighthouse board he made an interesting series of experiments on sound in connection with the waves and on the echo from the waves; and also experimented on the burning of oils, devising lamps which, by the introduction of cheaper oils, saved the government millions of dollars. He was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1849; was a charter member of the National Academy of Science, and its president, 1868-78; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a member of the American Philosophical society and of numerous other learned societies. He was knigted by the King of Norway and Sweden and was made master of St. Olof. He received the honorary degree of A.M. from Union college in 1829, and that of LL.D from the College of South Carolina in 1888, from the University of the State of New York in 1850, and from Harvard in 1851. His papers printed in scientific publications include over 150 subjects; his official papers include a series on meteorology in its connection with agriculture, contributed to the Agricultural Reports (1855-59), and Scientific Writings of Joseph Henry, published by the Smithsonian Institution in two volumes (1886). He edited the annual volumes of the Smithsonian Reports (1846-77) and published Syllabus of Lectures on Physics (1844). After his death a memorial meeting was held in his honor in the house of representatives, attended by the President and all the heads of departments, representatives of learned societies and a large concourse drawn by affection as well as respect. The government erected on the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution a bronze statue of Professor Henry executed by William W. Story, at the cost of $15,000, which was unveiled April 19, 1883, with appropriate [p.210] ceremony. On the completion of the new library of congress a statue of Henry was placed among the sixteen occupying the most prominent position in the building, the only one representing his century. His death occurred in Washington, D.C., May 13, 1873.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

John Kintzing Kane, jurist, was born in Albany, N.Y., May 16, 1795. He was graduated from Yale university, A.B,, 1814, A.M., 1817; was admitted to the bar in 1817 and practised in Philadelphia, Pa. He was a Federal representative in the state legislature in 1823; Democratic solicitor of Philadelphia, 1828-30; a supporter of Andrew Jackson in the canvas of 1828 and again in 1832, and the accredited author of some of Jackson's state papers. President Jackson appointed him an indemnity commissioner to France in 1832, and he prepared a report of the commission and was the author of "Notes" on questions decided by the board in 1836, and also of the first printed attack on the Bank of the United States. He was attorney-general of Pennsylvania, 1845-46; and was appointed judge of the U.S. court for the district of Pennsylvania in 1846. He was an original member of the board of trustees of Girard college, and was prominent in the controversy which divided the Presbyterian church into the new and old schools. He was a trustee and legal adviser of the Presbyterian church in the United States, and in 1856 was elected president of the American Philosophical society. He was married to Jane Duval Leiper and had three sons, Elisha Kent, Thomas Leiper and John Kintzing. He died in Philadelphia, Pa., Feb. 21, 1858.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Philip Livingston, signer, was born in Albany, N.Y., Jan. 15, 1716, son of Philip and Catherine (Van Brugh) Livingston. He was graduated from Yale, A.B., 1737, A.M., 1740, and engaged in business in New York city as a merchant. He was one of the seven aldermen of the city, 1754-63; a member of the provincial assembly, 1763-69 and speaker in 1768; a member of the committee of correspondence; a delegate to the stamp-act congress in October, 1765; a delegate to the Continental congress, 1774-78, and at the first convention of that body he was one of the committee appointed to prepare an address to the People of Great Britain. He was one of the four delegates from New York who signed the Declaration of Independence. It was at his residence on Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., that Washington held the council of war that decided on the retreat from Long Island in 1776. He was a member of the state assembly and in May, 1777, was chosen state senator. He was one of the founders of the New York Society library in 1754; of the chamber of commerce in 1770; and one of the governors of the New York hospital in 1771. He was prominent in the establishment of King's college, and in 1746 he aided in founding the Livingston professorship of divinity at Yale. He was married to Christina, daughter of Richard Ten Broeck, recorder of Albany. He died while in attendance at the 6th session of the Continental congress, at York, Pa., June 12, 1778.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

William Page, painter, was born in Albany, N.Y., Jan. 23, 1811. His parents removed to New York city in 1819, and in 1821 he received a premium from the American Institute for a drawing in India ink. He entered upon the study of law in the office of Frederick De Peyster in 1825, but soon left and apprenticed himself to James Herring, the portrait painter, with whom he remained nearly a year. He next became the pupil of Samuel F. B. Morse through whom he was admitted as a student at the National Academy of Design, where he received a silver medal for his drawings from the antique. He settled in Albany, N.Y., as a portrait painter; removed to New York city in 1831, was elected a member of the National Academy of Design, in 1836, and painted the portrait of Gov. William L. Marcy for the New York City Hall, and that of John Quincy Adams, for Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass. He resided in Boston, 1844-47, where he painted a large number of portraits; returned to New York in the latter year, and in 1849 went to Europe, spending his time chiefly in Florence and Rome, where he painted the portraits of many distinguished persons, including Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Hiram Powers. He also produced his two "Venuses"; "Moses and Aaron on Mount Horeb"; the "Flight into Egypt," and the "Infant Bacchus." He made a study of the works of Titian, whose method of painting he professed to have discovered, and his copies were so admirable that one of them was seized by the authorities at Florence, under the belief that it was the original painting. He returned to New York in 1860, resided at Eaglewood, near Perth Amboy, N.J., for four years, and then built a house on Staten Island. He was president of the National Academy of Design, 1871-73, and in 1874 visited Germany to study the supposed death-mask of Shakespeare, from which he produced a bust and several portraits. He delivered several courses of lectures on art; was known as an experimenter in colors, and published a New Geometrical Method of Measuring the Human Figure (1860). His work includes: The Holy Family (1837); The Last Interview (1838); portraits of Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Charles P. Daly (1848), owned by the New York Historical society; James Russell Lowell, Gov. Reuben E. Fenton (1870); Charlotte Cushman (1880); General Grant (1880); Thomas Le Clear (1883); and Charles Sumner, incomplete (1885); Head of Christ (1870); Cupid (1880); and Ruth and Naomi. He also executed a full-length painting of Admiral Farragut at the battle of Mobile Bay, which was presented to the Russian government in 1871. He died in Tottenville, Staten Island, N.Y., Oct. 1, 1885.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Albany, (Albany County) New York

Local History Notes:

Biographies: